it takes an entire village to raise a man

Menu

Dinner at Dads

Inspired by actor Justin Baldoni’s Man Enough, Dinner @ Dads is an opportunity for men to get together over a shared meal to talk and listen to stories about what it means to be a man. How we have come to this place in gender relations and what the future of gender relationships might be from the male perspective.

“Men are renowned for their reluctance to open up and talk about their experiences and emotions in a heart-felt way. Dinner @ Dads has shown just how wrong this assumption might be.

I think that perhaps the problem is not that they don’t want to talk, they simply don’t know how to have these conversations.

Dinner @ Dads has shown that men really do want to support and care for each other.”

One of the most powerful realisations in my life has been that everyone is struggling. The man that is standing beside you has the same feelings of uncertainty and doubt. He too worries that he may not be a good enough father, partner, brother or son. That he is not being a good enough mate. He too is confused about who he is and what he is expected to be and to do.

Share this:

Like this:

The Inspiration

In 1991 I was called to the Ministry of Health. They wanted to brief me on a piece of work to do with the National Cervical Screening Campaign, about to be launched in New Zealand for the first time.

In a startling revelation, the woman with whom I was meeting for the first time, said “we know that more men die each year from prostate cancer than women die from cervical cancer. Yet, we chose to do this (the National Cervical Screening Campaign) because we know that men are less likely to make a fuss.”

Around 27 years later, here in New Zealand 50 women die each year from cervical cancer. Way too many.

600 men die of prostate cancer in New Zealand each year and we don’t make a fuss.